Letters From a Stoic - Seneca: Summary of all 124 Letters
it is preferable to deal with one's own ills, rather than with another's – to sift oneself and see for how many vain things one is a candidate, and cast a vote for none of them.
This brings peace and freedom instead of being tied in to other people’s reputation and ill-wills. The only way to reduce Fortune to the bottom is by not demanding nor asking anything from it. We are not at the service of nature. Seeking happiness is a desire that ruins, because it is never satisfied.
Many things attract the soul’s impulses, and searching for the things which attract the impulse never bring good, only harm. Instead take the following definition of that which is good for the soul:
That is good which rouses the soul's impulse towards itself in accordance with nature, and is worth seeking only when it begins to be thoroughly worth seeking.
By this time it becomes an honorable thing, so it shall be desired.
Borrow from yourself, not from a person or institution that wants something else in return. No matter how small, says Seneca, we only need to make up what we are currently missing. The ultimate desire is to be free from worry. A starving man despises nothing.
The wise man is the keenest seeker for the riches of nature.
Would you rather have much, or enough? Seneca describes the man who has much still desires more, therefore proving he has not desired enough. The latter has a stopping point. People who have everything still crave more. Money only compounds desires.
The ones who is rich are similar to the ones who have a fever. People say they have a fever when the fever actually has them. Similarly then, people say they have money when the money has them.
Lucilius asked the following question: How do we acquire knowledge that is good and honorable?
Nature has given us the path to knowledge but not the actual knowledge itself. That part is up to us. For now, there are vices which live right next to virtue. The man consistent in all his actions, sound in judgment and is moved to act rightly under all circumstances, this is the man we should desire to have around us.
We have separated this perfect virtue into its several parts. The desires had to be reined in, fear to be suppressed, proper actions to be arranged, debts to be paid; we therefore included self-restraint, bravery, prudence, and justice – assigning to each quality its special function.
The man with perfect virtue never cursed his luck and believed he was a soldier of the universe. Why shall we scorn at our destiny, for it is nature guiding us along. How can we live on the Earth proclaiming nothing is enough for us when we are bound to perish?
The greatest proof of an evil mind is unsteadiness, and continued wavering between pretence of virtue and love of vice.
The wise man knows he is one man, but the unwise continues to be shifting in desire and course at any given moment.